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"If Al Gore were so profoundly afraid of climate change, he wouldn't fly in a private jet or have a huge mansion with massive electrical consumption. Since he d
by Rangi42 11y ago
"If Al Gore were so profoundly afraid of climate change, he wouldn't fly in a private jet or have a huge mansion with massive electrical consumption. Since he does those things, then he's obviously not convinced that human activity affects climate."
Nobody is claiming that climate change is a threat just because Al Gore says so, so the sincerity of his belief is irrelevant. Politicians are not the ones "selling the world" on climate change; they're the ones being persuaded (to varying degrees) by scientific evidence of a man-made threat, and they're in a position of power to do something about it.
As for what happens when politicians don't pay attention to climate change, just look at Florida: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/09/florida-state-most-affected-by-climate-change-reportedly-bans-term-climate-change/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/09... Their senator and governor don't believe global warming exists, and they're already having to deal with rising sea levels. It's the politicians who don't take action that are harming their constituents, not those who do.
- jdhzzz 11y agothey're the ones being persuaded (to varying degrees) by scientific evidence of a man-made threat Personally I am in the camp that global warming is almost certainly real. What I haven't seen is an estimate of what percentage is due to human activity. Do you have a citation for what that might be? It strikes me that appropriate action differs depending on humanity's contribution, e.g. < 40%, do nothing to alter consumption, it won't appreciably alter the result, > 100 % (Hey, without human intervention we might actually experience cooling) throttle it down as best as practical.
- dragonwriter 11y agoThe amount of the change that's due to human activity and the amount of effect viable changes in human activity could have are, at best, very loosely related.
- DennisP 11y agoFirst, scientists predicted that if we kept emitting CO2 the planet would warm up, because physics. Then we emitted lots more CO2 and lo and behold, the planet's warming up. That doesn't strike you as a bit too much coincidence? For more detail see Hansen's book Storms of My Grandchildren, which describes: - The physics of the greenhouse effect - The contributions to global warming from CO2, methane, black soot, etc - The geological record that shows how the planet responded, when things like this happened before